David Currie

As regular readers may remember, around Xmas each year the Tuesday night runners do a run that takes in all of the pubs that we have visited during the year. This, it seems, was not enough of a challenge for Neil and he proposed that we should run not only all of the pubs, but also all of the car parks that we visit. This is particularly significant when it comes to our runs from Wilverley where we usual drink at Bank afterwards. As if this still wasn’t enough, Neil wanted to make it a round trip rather than the usual linear route. And, although to be fair he wouldn’t have known this at the time, he wanted to do it on a day when the temperature was in the mid 20s.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Neil didn’t get many takers for this venture and I’m afraid I wasn’t going to be one of them! Neil and Roderick set out from Fritham early this morning, heading past the Sir Walter Tyrell at Rufus Stone to the New Forest Inn at Emery Down and then on to The Oak at Bank. From there they went across to Beaulieu Road Station and then headed west towards Brockenhurst which is where I joined them at the Standing Hat car park. I had a distinct advantage at this point given that they had already run 17 miles by now.

We skirted round to the north of Brockenhurst and on to the car park at Wilverley which was heaving in the summer sunshine. From there we ran along the edge of the Inclosure (which sadly didn’t provide much shade) and crossed the A35. We parted company for a short while as we crossed Mill Lawn Brook. I headed right a bit to cross at the bridge and then couldn’t find Neil and Roderick again. They had stopped at the stream and, as you can see from Neil’s trace on my watch below, then spent a while looking for me before I, having continued on to the clearing beyond, eventually phoned them. We met again by Burley Cottage although I had taken a slightly more direct route along the cycle path.

From there we continued north to cross the A31 at the underpass, then cut through Milkham Inclosure to High Corner Inn where we were met by Christine with welcome top-ups to the water supplies. From there it was a familiar final push back to Fritham.

In total, Neil and Roderick had covered an impressive 34 miles on trails and through terrain taking 6 hours 35 minutes. I had joined them at the mid-point in both time and distance which says much for their determination to keep going in the second half. Congratulations guys – good effort! Look forward to seeing you on Tuesday night. 😉

Sadly, the day didn’t end quite so well. As were leaving the pub Emma slipped off the bench and caught the back of her head on the seat, as a result of which she took a massive bite in to her tongue. Hopefully the blood pouring out of her mouth didn’t put too many people of their drink. Emma made the most of it getting regular cuddles for the rest of the evening although she was in a particularly bad way at dinner time when eating was obviously painful. Looking at the large incision in to her tongue I could see why. Let’s hope she’s feeling a bit better tomorrow.

PS I’ve had to reduce the number of data points in the GPX below so that XML Google Maps doesn’t grind to a halt. Here’s the full GPX[urldisplaymode=nomap] if you’re interested in all the gory detail!

Run the Pubs/Car Parks Reduced GPX

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 28th, 2009 at 8:04 pm and is filed under Family, Friends, Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.